Just Around the Corner.

by Fannie Hurst.

POWER AND HORSE-POWER

In the Knockerbeck Hotel there are various parlors; Pompeian rooms lined in marble and pillared in chaste fluted columns; Louis Quinze corners, gold-leafed and pink-brocaded, princ.i.p.ally furnished with a spindly-legged Vernis-Martin cabinet and a large French clock in the form of a celestial sphere surmounted by a gold cupid.

There are high-ceilinged rendezvous rooms, with six arm and two straight chairs chased after the manner of Gouthiere, and a series of small inlaid writing-desks, generously equipped for an avidious public to whom the crest-embossed stationery of a four-dollar-a-day-up hotel suggests long-forgotten friends back home.

Just off the lobby is the Oriental room, thick with arabesque hangings and incense and distinguished by the famous pair of Chinese famille rose mandarin jars, fifty-three inches high and enameled with Hoho birds and flowers. In careful contrast the adjoining room, a Colonial parlor paneled in black walnut and designed by a notorious architect, is ten degrees lower in temperature and lighted by large rectangular windows, through whose leaded panes a checkered patch of sunshine filters across the floor for half an hour each forenoon.

Then there is the manicure parlor, done in white tile, and stationary wash-stands by the Herman Casky Hygienic Company, Eighth Avenue.

The oracle of this particular Delphi was Miss Gertrude Sprunt, white-shirtwaisted, smooth-haired, and cool-fingered. Miss Sprunt could tell, almost as soon as you stepped out of the elevator opposite the parlors, the shortest cut to your hand and heart; she could glance at a pair of cuffs and give the finger-nails a correspondingly high or domestic finish, and could cater to the manicurial whims of Fifth Avenue and Four Corners alike. After one digital treat at her clever hands you enlisted as one of Miss Sprunt's regulars.

This fact was not lost upon her sister worker, Miss Ethyl Mooney. "Say, Gertie"--Miss Mooney tied a perky little ap.r.o.n about her trim waist and patted a bow into place--"is there ever a mornin' that you ain't booked clear through the day?"

Miss Sprunt hung her flat sailor hat and blue jacket behind the door, placed her hands on her hips, glanced down the length of her svelte figure, yawned, and patted her mouth with her hand.

"Not so you could notice it," she replied, in gapey tones. "I'm booked from nine to quitting just six days of the week; and, believe me, it's not like taking the rest cure."

"I guess if I was a jollier like you, Gert, I'd have a waitin'-list, too, I wish I could get on to your system."

"Maybe I give tradin'-stamps," observed Miss Sprunt, flippantly.

"You give 'em some sort of laughing-gas; but me, I'm of a retiring disposition, and I never could force myself on n.o.body."

Miss Gertrude flecked at herself with a whisk-broom.

"Don't feel bad about it, Ethyl; just keep on trying."

Miss Ethyl flushed angrily.

"Smarty!" she said.

"I wasn't trying to be nasty, Ethyl--you're welcome to an appointment every twenty minutes so far as I'm concerned."

Miss Ethyl appeared appeased.

"You know yourself, Gert, you gotta way about you. A dollar tip ain't nothin' for you. But look at me--I've forgot there's anything bigger'n a quarter in circulation."

"There's a great deal in knowing human nature. Why, I can almost tell a fellow's first name by looking at his half-moons."

"Believe me, Gert, it ain't your glossy finish that makes the hit; it's a way you've got of making a fellow think he's the whole show."

"I _do_ try to make myself agreeable," admitted Miss Sprunt.

"Agreeable! You can look at a guy with that Oh-I-could-just-listen-to-you-talk-for-ever expression, and by the time you're through with him he'll want to take his tens out of the water and sign over his insurance to you."

"Manicuring is a business like anything else," said Miss Sprunt, by no means displeased. "You sure do have to cater to the trade."

"Well, believe me--" began Miss Ethyl.

But Miss Gertrude suddenly straightened, smiled, and turned toward her table.

Across the hall Mr. James Barker, the rubbed-down, clean-shaven result of a Russian bath, a Swedish ma.s.sage, and a bountiful American breakfast, stepped out of a French-gold elevator and entered the parlor.

Miss Sprunt placed the backs of her hands on her hips and c.o.c.ked her head at the clock.

"Good morning, Mr. Barker; you're on time to the minute."

Mr. Barker removed his black-and-white checked cap, deposited three morning editions of evening papers atop a small gla.s.s case devoted to the display of Madame Dupont's beautifying cold-creams and marvelous cocoa-b.u.t.ters, and rubbed his hands swiftly together as if generating a spark. A large diamond mounted in a cruelly stretched lion's mouth glinted on Mr. Barker's left hand; a sister stone glowed like an acetylene lamp from his scarf.

"On time, eh! Leave it to your Uncle Fuller to be on time for the big show--a pretty goil can drag me from the hay quicker'n anything I know of."

Miss Gertrude quirked the corner of one eye at Miss Ethyl in a scarcely perceptible wink and filled a gla.s.s bowl with warm water.

"That's one thing I will say for my regular customers--they never keep me waiting; that is the beauty of having a high-cla.s.s trade."

She glanced at Mr. Barker with pleasing insinuation, and they seated themselves _vis-a-vis_ at the little table.

Miss Sprunt surrounded herself with the implements of her craft--small porcelain jars of pink and white cold-creams, cakes of powder in varying degrees of pinkness, vials of opaque liquids, graduated series of files and scissors, large and small chamois-covered buffers, and last the round gla.s.s bowl of tepid water cloudy with melting soap.

Mr. Barker extended his large hand upon the little cushion and sighed in satisfaction.

"Go to it, sis--gimme a shine like a wind-shield."

She rested his four heavy fingers lightly in her palm.

"You really don't need a manicure, Mr. Barker; your hands keep the shine better than most."

"Well, I'll be hanged--tryin' to learn your Uncle Fuller when to have his own hands polished! Can you beat it?" Mr. Barker's steel-blue shaved face widened to a broad grin. "Say, you're a goil after my own heart--a regular little sixty-horse-power queen."

"I wasn't born yesterday, Mr. Barker."

"I know you wasn't, but you can't bluff me off, kiddo. You don't need to give me no high-power shine if you don't want to, but I've got one dollar and forty minutes' worth of your time cornered, just the samey."

Miss Sprunt dipped his hands into tepid water.

"I knew what I said would not frighten you off, Mr. Barker. I wouldn't have said it if I thought it would."

Mr. Barker guffawed with gusto.

"Can you beat the wimmin?" he cried. "Can you beat the wimmin?"

"You want a high pink finish, don't you, Mr. Barker?"